Timelines for year 1972
John Chaney
Basketball coach at Cheyney State University Head Coach (1972-1982) and Temple University (1982-present).
Larry Niven
His short story, The Fourth Profession, appeared in The 1972 Annual World's Best SF, a compilation on Science Fiction writers.
Won the Hugo award in 1972, for "Inconstant Moon.".
Edwin Edwards
Three-time Governor of Louisiana (1972-1980, 1984-1988, 1992-1996); previously a U.S. Representative from Louisiana (1965-1972).
Rene Auberjonois
Turned down the role of Father Mulcahey in the television series "M*A*S*H" (1972). He had played the role in the 1969 motion picture version.
Veronica Hamel
In 1972 she and her then husband became the new owners of Marilyn Monroe's Brentwood home. They hired a contractor to replace the roof and remodel the house, and the contractor discovered a sophisticated eavesdropping and telephone tapping system that covered every room in the house. The components were not commercially available in 1962, but were--in the words of a retired Justice Department official--"standard FBI issue." This discovery lent further support to claims of conspiracy theorists that Marilyn had been under surveillance by the Kennedys and the Mafia. The new owners spent $100,000 to remove the bugging devices from the house.
Alan Alda
Before his 2003 emergency surgery in Chile, the surgeon tried to explain the procedure he was about to perform in layman's terms. Alda confidently asserted that the operation is called an end-to-end anastomosis. The stunned surgeon asked how he knew that. Alda replied that he had done the procedure numerous times on "M*A*S*H" .
He and Loretta Swit were the only two to appear in both the pilot episode of "M*A*S*H" and in the final show (with the exception of the opening credits, where Gary Burghoff's character Radar appears, albeit edited after his departure from the show, and Jamie Farr, who provides the voice of the PA announcer in the pilot episode).
Was the only actor to appear in every episode of "M*A*S*H" .
Earned a reported $200,000 a week for "M*A*S*H" in 1980.
Is the first person ever to win an Emmy for acting, writing, and directing. (He accomplished to win in all three categories for his work on "M*A*S*H" ).
He, father Robert Alda and step-brother Antony Alda appeared together in an episode of "M*A*S*H" , "Lend a Hand", during Season 8. Robert had previously appeared in "The Consultant" in Season 3.
Alda almost turned down the role of Hawkeye Pierce on "M*A*S*H" because he did not want war to be a "backdrop for lighthearted high jinks... "I wanted to show that the war was a bad place to be." He had served in the Korean War.
He commuted from his home in New Jersey to LA every weekend for 11 years while starring in "M*A*S*H" . His wife and daughters lived in NJ, and he did not want to uproot the family to LA, especially because he did not know how long the show would last.
He did not sign on to play Hawkeye Pierce on "M*A*S*H" until 6 hours before filming began on the pilot episode.
He has twice played characters from Maine, from opposite ends of the ethical spectrum. In "M*A*S*H" he was noble surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, whose hometown was Crabapple Cove. In The Aviator he played corrupt U.S. Sen. Owen Brewster, nemesis of Howard Hughes. The author of the original "M*A*S*H" books, Maine doctor Richard Hornberger (writing as Richard Hooker), based the Pierce character on himself but was said to dislike the TV version of his story as overly moralistic. As for Sen. Brewster, whose smarmy hypocrisy was well-depicted by Alda, he was booted out of the Senate by Maine voters in the next Republican primary.
Has succeeded Donald Sutherland in two roles: Hawkeye Pierce in "M*A*S*H" , and Flan in Six Degrees of Separation . He played the latter part in an Audio Books recording. During an appearance both made at a ceremony/dinner for Queen Elizabeth II, the two happened to be standing in the reception line next to each other. As they waited for the Queen to make her way down the line, Alda whispered to Sutherland, "Thank you for my life.".